Popular Bouncer Found Hanged

February 23, 1999|By JONATHON KING and DONNA PAZDERA Staff Writers

To police, he was the elusive ringleader of a criminal gang. To local children's charities, he was a benefactor. To his family, he was the devoted father of a young boy. And to his defenders, he was a man whose life came to an avoidable and tragic end.

Early Saturday morning, Russell Edward Feder, known as "Rusty" to regulars on the nightclub scene in Broward and Palm Beach counties, hanged himself in a cell at Broward County's main jail, officials said.

A former professional boxer, Feder worked recently as an independent stockbroker but was most recognizable as the leader of a group of powerfully built bouncers called the Circle of Sharks.

"I've had a lot of clients I wouldn't have much good to say about, but Rusty Feder was truly a good person," said attorney Gabriel Grasso, who had known Feder for three years and had represented him in the past. "When they locked him up, they took a person who was contributing to society, donating to charities and doing a lot of good, and this is how it has turned out."

Feder, 35, was in jail on charges of armed kidnapping, burglary, burglary with battery and extortion in connection with the beating of a man in 1995 after an alleged drug deal went bad. He had been held without bond since Oct. 12.

Broward Sheriff's officials said that Feder had been transferred from the North Broward Detention Center to the main jail on Feb. 9 because he had a status conference scheduled this week and because he kept telling people that if he was convicted, he was not planning to serve his time, said Cheryl Stopnick, spokeswoman for the Broward Sheriff's Office. Authorities thought Feder was a flight risk, not a suicide risk.

"He was not exhibiting any tendencies toward being suicidal," said Stopnick.

At 1:30 a.m. Saturday, a jail deputy checked Feder's cell, but at 2:04 a.m. his cellmate began shouting and pounding on the bars, calling for help.

Deputies found Feder hanged with a sheet. There was no note. Investigators are certain the death is a suicide, according to the Broward Medical Examiner's Office.

Feder's family and his attorneys said they were stunned by news of his death, news that spread through the street grapevine rather than official channels.

"We are heartbroken. More so for Russell's son. He loved him so much, and they adored each other," said Feder's stepmother, Pauline Feder, who said she first learned of her stepson's death on Saturday afternoon when a friend of Feder's came to her door. She was unable to confirm the rumor until late Saturday, when she finally reached the Medical Examiner's Office.

"Everybody knew him. Just to give you an idea, I had already heard from four or five people by Saturday night about what happened," said Chad Pence, one of the managers at Chili Pepper. "It wasn't a matter of guilty or not guilty. It was just sitting there month after month. A bad thing has happened to a good man."

Feder was fighting the kidnapping charges and had claimed his arrest was yet another attempt to discredit the Circle of Sharks.

"It's just more of the same. They figure I'm some sort of crime boss and they'll keep finding things to charge me with," he said in an interview last year.

Feder was the self-described organizer of the Sharks, a group of muscular, tattooed nightclub bouncers who worked the doors and floors of clubs like Roxy, Chili Pepper, Club Boca and Pure Platinum.

He said they were just a group of athletes who met as club doormen and became friends.

But he also claimed that police had relentlessly pursued him over the past five years under the misconception that the Sharks were involved with crimes ranging from extortion to assault to drug dealing. Feder consistently denied the charges.

"I don't know what the cops think of us, because they never take me seriously when I offer to talk to them," Feder said in a 1997 interview. "We just want to do our charity work and live our lives. But somebody's got us in their sights, and they're not messing around."

At that time, Feder's group had collected more than $15,000 for Kids in Distress and the Special Olympics by selling T-shirts and staging amateur boxing matches at the clubs where they worked.

When Feder was picked up in October on the kidnapping charge, it was the ninth time a Shark member had been arrested in four years. Prosecutors have still not secured a single conviction from those arrests.

Broward's multi-agency Metropolitan Organized Crime Intelligence Unit has been watching the group for years. No one in that unit returned phone calls Monday.

The prosecutor assigned to the kidnapping case said he was unfamiliar with the history of the Sharks but was moving forward on the recent charges when he heard of Feder's death.

"We had a status hearing this week, but the case was a ways from trial," state prosecutor James Cobb said. "I just got a street crime case. There was a terrible beating and Feder's truck was identified as being there at the time of the kidnapping. Two witnesses came forward."